To further enhance the security and safety of the half million plus adults and children who visit each year, Cadbury World, the UK visitor attraction devoted entirely to chocolate, has recently invested in a versatile high performance CCTV installation based on equipment supplied by Siemens Building Technologies Security Products. As part of Cadbury World's programme of continuous improvement, it was decided recently to upgrade the attraction's CCTV installation, as the existing system provided only partial coverage of the visitor areas.
Cadbury World called on Birmingham based ADI Limited, a security installation company with whom it had a longstanding relationship. Engineers from ADI surveyed the site and quickly realised that it presented a special challenge - light levels that varied enormously from area to area. Some areas of the site are, for example, designed to give the impression that the visitor is walking through dense jungle. In these areas, the light levels are very low. Other parts of the site are, however, very brightly lit.
"We carried out trials in all of the different areas using a variety of cameras and equipment," said Jason Griffiths, Project Manager at ADI, "and it soon became apparent that Bewator equipment, used in conjunction with Siemens cameras both supplied by SBT, gave us the best results across the whole range of light levels on the site."
"We also received outstanding support from SBT," he continued. "The company sent its own engineers to site to help ensure that we selected the best equipment for each area, and that we got the best possible results from it."
The final system supplied and installed by ADI comprises no fewer than 86 Siemens cameras, giving Cadbury World complete CCTV coverage of its public areas for the first time. Because the site is relatively compact, analogue cameras and cabling were chosen as the most cost effective option. The cameras are complemented by four Bewator Eventys Pro digital video recorders (DVRs), two with 32 input channels, and two with 16 input channels. Two of the DVRs are installed in the Cadbury World local control room, while the remaining two are installed at a remote location for added security. All of the recorders have hard disk capacity of 1 terabyte.
In order to keep cabling costs to a minimum, the remote DVRs are linked to the remainder of the system via an IP network connection. This makes use of the site's existing network infrastructure, so no new cabling was needed. Recordings are routinely stored for 30 days, and there is also provision to transfer selected recordings to external media such as CDs and DVDs for permanent retention.
In order to minimise the disk space required by the recordings without degrading the usefulness of the stored images, ADI has carefully matched the recording rate for each camera to the type of activity in the area covered by that camera. The recording rate for cameras in low traffic areas is, for example, 3 frames per second, while full motion recording at 25 frames per second is used for the cameras in the busiest areas.
With certain cameras, the motion detection feature offered by the SBT equipment is also used, so that images are recorded at a low frame rate if no motion is present, but at a higher frame rate if the camera can see motion within its coverage zone. Facility for continuous monitoring of live images is available when required simply by connecting a laptop PC running Bewator's RMC software to any convenient network node. The same option also gives access to stored images from any of the DVRs, and the RMC software's powerful search functions make it fast and easy to locate images relating to any specific event of interest.
"The new CCTV system is a great asset for us," said Kirsteen Meldrum, Commercial Development Manager of Cadbury World. "It's helping us to achieve our top priority of keeping our visitors safe."
